Chris Woebken
Bard Graduate Center

Entangled Objects: Designing for Inquiry
Where does an object end? Objects connect us to the labor, resources, infrastructures, and expectations that shape everyday life. In this talk, Chris Woebken will consider how design can make those relationships available for shared inquiry. An object can provide evidence about the world; it can also be made to investigate a question and invite others to change how we understand it.

Woebken will begin by sharing 99¢ Futures, a project developed through the Extrapolation Factory in which he placed speculative products in a Brooklyn discount store to bring conversations about possible futures into an everyday setting. He will then introduce three projects he will develop during his Bard Graduate Center fellowship: Sunk Costs—examining the material afterlives of sunken cargo; The City They Carry—which investigates the objects, practical knowledge, and informal infrastructure sustaining delivery workers’ daily work; and a cloudburst project with City as Living Laboratory (CALL) and a local youth group at the Queens Museum exploring water and place in Corona, Queens. Across these projects, Woebken asks whose knowledge shapes an investigation, how making can reveal new questions, and what allows an inquiry to continue beyond a public encounter.

Chris Woebken works across design, education, and participatory futures research. He co-founded the Extrapolation Factory in 2012, developing methods for people to explore possible futures through objects and everyday encounters. His collaborative projects are represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Nevada Museum of Art. A graduate of the Royal College of Art’s Design Interactions program, he is a visiting fellow at Bard Graduate Center for fall 2026.

Tuesday, September 22, 12:15 pm

38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall
Tea, coffee, and snacks will be served starting at noon.
No registration required.